It’s a theory of mine that life in most societies involves being keenly aware that the end is coming. Your own individual end, yes, but also the end of this, the entire experience that is life as you’ve known it. The mass of our collective canon is littered with stories about the world’s end, where the death of mankind and the death of the universe can be seen as linked or interchangeable. It’s almost as if the second humans evolved enough to contemplate that we each must someday die, those early people immediately assumed that when we go, we all go, the entire world coming along for the ride, an unwritten murder-suicide pact between species and planet.
I find myself thinking about doomsday cults fairly often as I wander the aisles inside the Target near the apartment I share with my girlfriend and our dog. This happened most recently during New York’s first heatwave of the year, the air doing its best to convince you it’s nearing 110 degrees, a preview of what’s to come. It’s impossible to tell from the inside, an almost pathological level of self-deception. Every minute spent inside that artificial oasis is another ticked away before our contract with the Earth runs out. The plentiful “Live, Laugh, Love” decor shapeshifts from a directive for your kooky aunt into a taunt.